Box Office Preview: 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' Aims to Continue Summer Boom

"The Change-Up" also hoping to catch fire in Aug. following July’s record-breaking $1.4 billion haul.

Summer box office revenues in North America are up 4% over last year and Hollywood's hoping the dog days of August prove just as healthy.

July alone brought in $1.4 billion in revenues -- the biggest month of all time at the domestic box office, fueled by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and Transformers: Dark of the Moon, plus a raft of comedies.

However, revenues year-to-date are still down 5% over 2010, thanks to a dramatic downturn in moviegoing the first part of the year. The film business hopes that August will help to close the gap further.

August used to be a graveyard for movies, but not longer. A number of high-profile movies unspool this month, beginning on Friday with 20th Century Fox and Chernin Entertainment's Rise of the Planet of the Apes, an origins pic designed to revive the cult sci-fi franchise.

Rise of the Apes, produced for $93 million, is widely expected to win the domestic box office with a gross of $30 million or more. The pic rolls out overseas in more than 25 territories, including some key markets in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Men of all ages are most interested in the film, followed by older women. The movie’s unaided awareness was notably low but nearly doubled in the past two days.

Fox has no easy task in convincing moviegoers to scrub from their memories Tim Burton’s 2001 Planet of the Apes, which was roundly rejected by critics and audiences. So far, Rise of the Apes is receiving rave reviews, which the studio hopes will translate into strong traffic at the multiplex this weekend and good legs throughout the dog days of August.

Just as the original Planet of the Apes — starring Charlton Heston — was a defining moment for its time, so is Rise of the Apes.

Every simian in Rise of the Apes was created using state-of-the-art performance capture technology developed by Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital for Fox and James Cameron’s Avatar. The technology, perfected even further, makes the ape played by Andy Serkis completely realistic.